


a foggy day in london town

by custardpringle



Series: in olden days, a glimpse of stocking [3]
Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-30
Updated: 2012-06-30
Packaged: 2017-11-08 20:55:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/447464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/custardpringle/pseuds/custardpringle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're the most useless man ever made." She tells him this once a week or so, but he can always do with reminding. (November 1935)</p>
            </blockquote>





	a foggy day in london town

Hilary is woken by the creak of floorboards in the hall, though it isn't as if she were sleeping very well to begin with. She sits up and listens for a moment, long enough to hear a rustle from the sitting-room and then another creak. "Is someone there?" she calls, before remembering that she damned well hates all the girls in novels who say exactly that and thus become terribly convenient targets for villains with coshes. Thankfully, the hall light clicks on as answer; Hilary wonders for half a moment if it's her char, whose hat is still sitting on the kitchen chair where she forgot it yesterday morning, but it's a more familiar-- and much more welcome-- figure that hesitates in her bedroom doorway.

"Hilary?" St. George hovers there, hatless, looking somehow apologetic even in silhouette; Hilary has never yet seen him uncertain around anyone the way he sometimes is around her, but perhaps she shouldn't take the pride in that that she does. "My man said you'd been phoning and something was wrong. I thought I'd better come round and see."

"At this hour?" Hilary pushes her hair back from her face and squints, trying to see his expression. "What were you thinking?"

"I was hauled out to dinner with Mother and some unlucky Countess she'd acquired for the occasion, and then I took myself out for drinks to get over the dinner and didn't get in until one." He spreads his hands and lets them fall again. "And I didn't know what had happened to you; I was afraid it might be something serious."

Hilary sighs, still half-asleep and still wishing she could see his face. "I had a terrible day-- nothing out of the ordinary, just relentlessly bad-- and I thought it might be salvaged if we went out to dinner. That's all. I didn't mean to frighten you."

"Well, I do feel a bit of an ass now." St. George leans his shoulder against the doorframe; he looks tired, but he only has himself to blame if he will insist on letting himself in at whatever absurd time it is. "Had I better just go home? Come round again in the morning, maybe, or for lunch?"

"No," Hilary says hastily, and shifts pointedly away from the edge of the bed. "No, I wanted you here, I still do, just-- come here?"

St. George is there in an instant, shedding his coat to the floor with a heavy thud and sitting down next to her, and Hilary holds onto him for dear life. "I'm sorry," he whispers, mouth pressed to her shoulder through her pajama top. "I had a fairly awful evening myself-- I'd have begged off in an instant if I'd known you were looking for me."

Hilary hugs him a little more tightly and kisses his temple; it is such a relief to have him here, even belatedly. "You're the most useless man ever made." She tells him this once a week or so, but he can always do with reminding.

"Mmm." St. George nods agreement against her shoulder. "Am I sacked?"

"Not just yet," Hilary decides; breaking things off with him would probably mean he would stop hugging her like this, which doesn't seem worth the effort at all. "Maybe tomorrow."

"Jolly generous of you. Especially," he adds, sounding uncomfortable for a moment, "as I seem to have wasted my evening on the wrong girl."

Hilary frowns; she knows St. George isn't to blame for these occasions sometimes cropping up, but she prefers not to dwell on them all the same. "That's all right."

"It's not all right," St. George complains. "It isn't fair to you, and it isn't fair to the girls Mother keeps hauling up for judgment who all know perfectly well what she's up to. And it makes me feel like a stud horse. Which is not," he adds plaintively, "as pleasant a feeling as one might imagine."

She smiles, for what feels like the first time all day. "No, I imagine not."

He shifts in her arms, twisting elaborately to kiss her without getting his shoes on the bedspread. "Honestly, Lee-- are you all right?"

"My editor is a worthless ass," says Hilary tiredly, "so no, but it's nothing new, really. I'll tell you about it, if you like, but not now."

He sighs and nods. "I'll owe you, all right? Next time Mother tries to hire me out I will beg off, and we'll get a hamper and have a picnic."

"In December?" Hilary inquires dubiously.

"Well." St. George pokes his tongue into his cheek for a moment, nonplussed. "I have always thought your sitting-room floor would be ideally suited for picnicking."

Hilary laughs, startling herself. "Jerry," she blurts, "I do love you so," and forgets entirely to be frightened of telling him until the words are already out of her mouth.

His eyes go wide and solemn and he swallows once, visibly; and when he says "Hilary," his voice is small in a way she knows pretty well by now.

"You must have known." She tries to smile as if it were nothing, but her heart is hammering, because despite her best efforts this matters very much indeed. "If you don't, by now, I've been doing something very wrong."

St. George can't seem to find anything to say to that, but his finger curls under her chin and he kisses her again; Hilary winds her arms around his neck and pulls him in closer, regardless of his shoes or anything else. "Tell me again," he breathes, after a few minutes.

"I love you," Hilary says again, obligingly, and almost laughs with the sheer truth of it and the look on his face. "I'm so in love with you that sometimes I think I might burst. Oh, Jerry, please stay here tonight? I'm afraid I'm too tired to do much but go back to sleep, but--"

"Of course." He still looks thoroughly awed; Hilary suspects he'd agree to anything, just now. "Just-- just a moment."

By the time the hall light goes out a minute later and St. George returns from the bathroom, stripped to his shorts and nothing else, Hilary's already curled up and beginning to doze despite her best efforts. She smiles, though, at the familiar feeling of him slipping into bed and draping himself up against her back. "There you are."

St. George shifts briefly behind her, one hand slipping comfortably up under her shirt to cover her stomach. If she were wearing a nightgown, it would be her thigh, simply for the sake of touching; it's a bit marvelous to know that, Hilary thinks, a little drugged with exhaustion and sentiment. "Love you," he murmurs against her ear.

It takes a moment to register, and then a shiver of joy runs up Hilary's spine; she's known, of course, same as he must have, but it seems there's something to hearing it aloud after all. "Lucky me," she says drowsily. "Doesn't mean you're getting to try anything with me tonight, though." It isn't that she doesn't want to-- indeed, she's resigned herself to the realization that she is in fact incredibly easy for him-- but she simply can't imagine staying awake long enough to follow through.

"That's all right; I love you anyway." St. George is smiling; it's dark and her back is to him but she knows, all the same.


End file.
